Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) on Tuesday denied he was to blame for fighting among Republicans after he pushed for shutting down the government instead of passing a temporary funding measure.
During an interview on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast, Gaetz responded to two New York Times columns both agreeing and disagreeing with his tactics to manipulate House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
One columnist noted that McCarthy had "become the not-so-glorified puppet of the House Republican conference's radicals, folks like Dan Bishop, Chip Roy and, most prominently, Matt Gaetz."
Gaetz told Bannon he was seen as "some sort of chaos agent."
"Why am I to blame for the chaos of the fact that these appropriations bills weren't here already?" he gasped. "Right? Like, how come we didn't do defense appropriations right alongside the National Defense Authorizing Bill?"
"You see, this is not a bug of the system," he continued. "It is a feature. They hold everything to the very end so that everyone feels rushed and under the pressure to avoid a shutdown. And that's how the administrative state continues."
